Why do we need SD-WAN?

Ine ciencies of Traditional WAN

In recent years, businesses are embracing digital transformation more rapidly than ever
expected. Remote working and online meetings are now standards. Many applications
are moved to the public cloud and many services are now available over the Internet.
Companies want to reduce costs and manage their infrastructure more effectively.
However, the traditional wide-area network (WAN) was designed to connect users at
remote sites to applications hosted in the company's data center. Dedicated leased
lines and MPLS circuits were used to provide secure and reliable connectivity to the DC.
Although some applications are now in public clouds and the Internet, the tra c from
the remote sites must come to the DC rst and then be routed to the Public Cloud and
back. This concept is visualized in gure 1.

W X P

Enterprise Applications

Remote Sites Data Center

WAN

Figure 1. Traditional WAN architecture - Centralized Connectivity

This WAN design no longer works well in a digital world where applications are out of
the data center, and the users consuming those applications are using a diverse set of
mobile devices. As businesses are rapidly adopting Software-as-a-service (SaaS) and
Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) models, it is pretty common to have ERP applications
hosted in AWS, o ce applications such as O ce 365 being used over the Internet,

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 company-speci c apps hosted in the HQ data center, and 3rd party applications hosted
in another datacenter. In this scenario, the traditional WAN connectivity between the
branches and the DC is not the most effective way to connect to all applications and
creates the following ine ciencies:

Costs - Increased bandwidth demands are forcing companies to upgrade their

private WAN circuits, which is expensive;
Higher Latency - Moving the tra c from remote sites to the DC and then to the
Cloud increases the overall round-trip times;
Availability - Running everything through the company's data center creates a
Single-point-of-failure;
Velocity - Deploying private MPLS circuits is a slow and tedious process that
usually slows down the roll-out of new remote sites.

With the adoption of Public Cloud, companies started rethinking their WAN designs.
Organizations decided to equip their remote site with Direct Internet Access links and to
o oad cloud-native applications directly over the Internet. Internet availability then
becomes a very important part of the branch/campus operations.

But how do you make sure all remote sites have an Internet connection in 99.99% of the
time? Well, the answer is - you purchase at least two independent Internet connections
from at least two service providers. Combining this with the emergence of 4G/5G and
having in mind that commodity internet circuits offer higher capacity at signi cantly
lower price points , it is a natural consequence that companies started exploring ways to
rely less on Private WAN and take advantage of the Internet circuits.

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 W X P

Internet Cloud Enterprise

DC2
DC1
Home Users
Remote Sites

SD-WAN

Figure 2. Software-De ned WAN architecture - Decentralized Connectivity

Software-de ned WAN (SD-WAN) solutions have been designed to address these
challenges. SD-WAN is part of the broader technology trend called software-de ned
networking (SDN). This is a new centralized approach to network management that
abstracts the underlying network infrastructure away from the services and applications
that run over the network.

De-centralized Network Management

For many years, networks have been deployed and operated in a decentralized manner,
meaning each device is individually managed and operated by network administrators.
Let's compare this to a centralized approach. If I take you back to the old days of
personal computers. Installing new hardware or software required users to con gure the
individual elements of the PC. For example, you bought a new sound card for your PC.
You install the card and then you must go to the website of the manufacturer and
download the drivers for your operating system. Then you install the drivers and resolve
any incompatibility issues. And only then you start listening to music, eventually.

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 Computer

Individual
Components as a System

Figure 3. Personal Computer as a System

Now compare this to the process nowadays. You just plug the hardware component you
bought and the PC handles everything else for you. You just signify the intent to listen to
music and the operating system con gures all underlying components necessary to play
the music. You are using a personal computer as one system and not as a group of
individual components.

And the one million dollar question is - Why can't we apply this logic to IP Networks?
Why the network can't be thought of and administered as a system instead of a
collection of individual devices such as routers, switches, and rewalls?

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 Users configure individual
components (network devices)
in order to use the system (the
network).

System

Individual
Components

Figure 4. Using Traditional Networks

As of today, most networks in the world are still being operated and con gured manually
using traditional "per device" methods. Although many of us will agree that this device
per device approach has many signi cant drawbacks such as:

Risk of human error - Many kinds of research have been made over the years that
shows that most network outages happen because of a con guration error
(ultimately a human error).
Services velocity - Many network engineers would agree that the network is the
slowest of all technology verticals when it comes to enabling a new feature or
service. Con guring each network device one by one using CLI is just not a
scalable approach. Don't get me wrong, we all love the command line, but it was
not designed to make massive scale con guration changes to multiple devices at
the same time.
Analytics - In traditional networks, where devices are managed in a decentralized
manner, almost no one knows the "big picture". In many cases, different devices are
operated by different teams, and a centralized collection of analytic data and
network-wide con guration sanity is a very hard task.

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 Bene ts of SD-WAN
Many business and technical researchers agree that the next-generation networks would
be deployed and operated As-a-System and not as a collection of individual network
devices. Software-De ned WAN (SD-WAN) is a centralized approach to managing and
operating large-scale WAN networks.

Single Management Plane

One of the main ideas of SD-WAN is to administrate the WAN through a single
centralized management plane, and the system itself to manage the underlying network
devices. This would provide many bene ts, business opportunities, and a better overall
user experience.

Users simply signify intent to use the

system (the network) and it
configures all underlying
components (network devices).

System

Individual
Components

Figure 5. Using Networks in an Intent-Based manner

Let's look at the most obvious advantages:

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 Automation - Operating and administrating a network as a system in a centralized
manner removes most of the complexity of large-scale networks. The whole idea of
centralized management is to use Automation. It creates simpli ed consistent
deployment and operational models.
Reduced cost - SD-WAN's automation allows leveraging any combination of
transport services such as Broadband Internet circuits, 4G/5G, MPLS, and any other
public transport – to securely connect users to applications.
Improved uptime - Centralized management and automation could eliminate most
human errors such as miscon gurations, wrong designs, and deployments. This
would signi cantly improve the overall uptime of the network.
More secure - Centrally managed networks can easily apply end-to-end security
policy across the enterprise network which is very hard to do using the box-to-box
approach.
Better analytics - To be honest, in traditional large-scale networks, very few people
(often nobody) know and could grasp the big picture. Because of the high number
of network devices and the large volume of analytics data, most of the time the
data is very hard to read and interpret quickly. Treating a network as one system
enables a single management console that presents data from multiple sources in
a uni ed display.

Forwarding based on auxiliary information

In traditional WAN networks, routers make forwarding decisions based on a limited set
of information. Traditional routing protocols usually consider only the link bandwidth and
link status. However, having multiple different WAN transport attached to a remote
site and wanting to use them in an active-active manner requires a more complex
routing forwarding process. I have read one of the best analogies of this in the Cisco
book "Cisco SD-WAN Cloud scale architecture".

Consider the analogy of traveling by car. Prior to the emergence of navigation software
such as Google Maps, for the travel from New York to Boston, a paper road map was
typically used to identify the best route. If there was road closure or delay along the
route, the driver would be forced to nd an alternative route based on limited
information. This is the way WAN routers operate in a traditional WAN network. Each
router makes its own autonomous decisions about how to route the packets, based on a
limited view of the topology around it.

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 Nowadays
In the old days - Drivers are aware of road blocks and construction works
- Drivers only know that different roads exist
- Traffic Jams and road accidents
- Real-time auxiliary information is not available
- Toll Taxes and much more info

Figure 6. Analogy between routing decisions and road navigation

Now compare this approach to today's road navigation with GPS. Navigation software
such as Google Maps can help a driver to avoid road closures, accidents, travel delays,
and ine cient routes. This is possible because the navigation software relies on
satellites in the sky that have a real-time sophisticated view of the road network. With
SD-WAN, edge routers can now rely on the centralized control/management plane for
auxiliary information on how to forward the tra c. In the same way, as the GPS helps
drivers avoid travel delays, SD-WAN helps routers avoid jitter, packet loss, and latency in
the network.

Cisco's SD-WAN solutions

Cisco offers two different SD-WAN products through its acquisitions of Meraki and
Viptela. Both products are full- edged SD-WAN solutions and have several overlapping
features. However, Cisco has made it clear that Meraki and Viptela are geared toward
two different markets.

Meraki is designed for small and mid-sized companies that want simplicity and
ease of use above everything else. Deploying the Meraki SD-WAN solution is easier
than Viptela and if the organization does not have any speci c niche requirements,
it would de nitely be the right choice.
Viptela has more advanced features available and requires a sophisticated network
design and architecture. The product is designed for large-scale enterprise-level

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 networks and has a high degree of customization.

Cisco Viptela VS Cisco Meraki

Enterprise-level SD-WAN solution SD-WAN solution with a basic level of
supporting complex WAN topologies customization designed for small and
with a high degree of customization medium sized organizations

Figure 7. Cisco's SD-WAN solutions

In this course, we are going to deep-dive into the Cisco Viptela SD-WAN and won't cover
the Meraki product.

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